All packages during installation are from the [core] repository. They are further divided into '''base''', and '''base-devel'''. Package information and brief descriptions are available [http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?repo=Core&arch=i686&limit=all&sort=pkgname here].

+

All packages during installation are from the [core] repository. They are further divided into '''base''', and '''base-devel'''. Package information and brief descriptions are available [https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?repo=Core&arch=i686&limit=all&sort=pkgname here].

Choose Write and type 'yes'. Beware that this operation may destroy data on your disk. Choose Quit to leave the partitioner.
Choose 'Done' to leave this menu and continue with "Set Filesystem Mountpoints".

Note: Since the latest developments of the Linux kernel which include the libata and PATA modules, all IDE, SATA and SCSI drives have adopted the sdx naming scheme. This is perfectly normal and should not be a concern.

Creating filesystems (general information)

Filesystem types

Again, a filesystem type is a very subjective matter which comes down to personal preference. Each has its own advantages, disadvantages, and unique idiosyncrasies. Here is a very brief overview of supported filesystems:

ext2Second Extended Filesystem- Old, mature GNU/Linux filesystem. Very stable, but without journaling support or barriers, which can result in data loss in a power loss or system crash. May be inconvenient for root (/) and /home, due to very long fsck's. An ext2 filesystem can easily be converted to ext3.

ext3Third Extended Filesystem- Essentially the ext2 system, but with journaling support and write barriers. ext3 is backward compatible with ext2. Extremely stable and mature.

ext4Fourth Extended Filesystem- Backward compatible with ext2 and ext3. Introduces support for volumes with sizes up to 1 exabyte and files with sizes up to 16 terabytes. Increases the 32,000 subdirectory limit in ext3 to 64,000. Offers online defragmentation ability.

ReiserFS (V3)- Hans Reiser's high-performance journaling FS uses a very interesting method of data throughput based on an unconventional and creative algorithm. ReiserFS is touted as very fast, especially when dealing with many small files. ReiserFS is fast at formatting, yet comparatively slow at mounting. Quite mature and stable. ReiserFS (V3) is not actively developed at this time. Generally regarded as a good choice for /var.

JFS - IBM's Journaled FileSystem- The first filesystem to offer journaling. JFS had many years of use in the IBM AIX® OS before being ported to GNU/Linux. JFS currently uses the least CPU resources of any GNU/Linux filesystem. Very fast at formatting, mounting and fsck's, and very good all-around performance, especially in conjunction with the deadline I/O scheduler. (See JFS.) Not as widely supported as ext or ReiserFS, but very mature and stable.

XFS - Another early journaling filesystem originally developed by Silicon Graphics for the IRIX OS and ported to GNU/Linux. XFS offers very fast throughput on large files and large filesystems. Very fast at formatting and mounting. Generally benchmarked as slower with many small files, in comparison to other filesystems. XFS is very mature and offers online defragmentation ability.

Btrfs - Also known as "Better FS" is a new filesystem with substantial new and powerful features similar to Sun/Oracle's excellent ZFS. These include snapshots, multi-disk striping and mirroring (basically software raid without mdadm), checksums, incremental backup, and on-the-fly compression (which can give a significant performance boost as well as save space), and more. It is still considered "unstable" as of January 2011, but has been merged into the mainline kernel under experimental status. Btrfs looks to be the future of linux filesystems, and is now offered as a root filesystem choice in all major distribution installers.

Warning: Btrfs has no fsck utility yet, so if any corruption occurs you cannot repair the filesystem.

JFS and XFS filesystems cannot be shrunk by disk utilities (such as gparted or parted magic)

A note on journaling

All above filesystems, except ext2, utilize journaling. Journaling file systems are fault-resilient file systems that use a journal to log changes before they are committed to the file system to avoid metadata corruption in the event of a crash. Note that not all journaling techniques are alike; specifically, only ext3 and ext4 offer data-mode journaling, (though, not by default), which journals both data and meta-data (but with a significant speed penalty). The others only offer ordered-mode journaling, which journals meta-data only. While all will return your filesystem to a valid state after recovering from a crash, data-mode journaling offers the greatest protection against file system corruption and data loss but can suffer from performance degradation, as all data is written twice (first to the journal, then to the disk). Depending upon how important your data is, this may be a consideration in choosing your filesystem type.

Manually configure block devices, filesystems and mountpoints

Specify each partition and corresponding mountpoint to your requirements. Recall that partitions end in a number. Therefore, sda is not itself a partition, but rather, signifies an entire drive.

Choose and create the filesystem (format the partition) for / by selecting yes. You will now be prompted to add any additional partitions. In our example, sda2 and sda4 remain. For sda2, choose a filesystem type and mount it as /var. Finally, choose the filesystem type for sda4, and mount it as /home.

Select Packages

All packages during installation are from the [core] repository. They are further divided into base, and base-devel. Package information and brief descriptions are available here.

First, select the package category:

Note: For expedience, all packages in base are selected by default. Use the space-bar to select and de-select packages.

base: Packages from the [core] repo to provide the minimal base environment. Always select this and do not remove any packages from it, as all packages in Arch Linux assume that base is always installed.

base-devel: Extra tools from [core] such as make, and automake. Most beginners should choose to install it, as many will probably need it later.

After category selection, you will be presented with the full lists of packages, allowing you to fine-tune your selections. Use the space bar to select and unselect.

Note: If connection to a wireless network is required, remember to select and install the wireless_tools package. Some wireless interfaces also need ndiswrapper and/or a specific firmware. If you plan to use WPA encryption, you will need wpa_supplicant. The Wireless Setup page will help you choose the correct packages for your wireless device. Also strongly consider installing netcfg, which will help you set up your network connection and profiles after you reboot into your new system.

After selecting the needed packages, leave the selection screen and continue to the next step, Install Packages.

Install Packages

Install Packages will install the selected packages to your new system. If you selected a CD-ROM/USB as the source, package versions from the CD-ROM/USB will be installed. If you opted for a netinstall, fresh packages will be downloaded from the Internet and installed.

Note: In some installers, you will be asked if you wish to keep the packages in the pacman cache. If you choose "yes", you will have the flexibility to downgrade packages to previous versions in the future, so this is recommended (you can always clear the cache in the future).

Configure the System

Tip: Closely following and understanding these steps is of key importance to ensure a properly configured system.

At this stage of the installation, you will configure the primary configuration files of your Arch Linux base system.

Now you will be asked which text editor you want to use; choose nano, joe or vi. nano is generally considered the easiest of the three. Please see the related wiki pages of the editor you wish to use for instructions on how to use them. You will be presented with a menu including the main configuration files for your system.

Note: It is very important at this point to edit, or at least verify by opening, every configuration file. The installer script relies on your input to create these files on your installation. A common error is to skip over these critical steps of configuration.

Can the installer handle this more automatically?

Hiding the process of system configuration is in direct opposition to The Arch Way. While it is true that recent versions of the kernel and hardware probing tools offer excellent hardware support and auto-configuration, Arch presents the user all pertinent configuration files during installation for the purposes of transparency and system resource control. By the time you have finished modifying these files to your specifications, you will have learned the simple method of manual Arch Linux system configuration and become more familiar with the base structure, leaving you better prepared to use and maintain your new installation productively.

/etc/rc.conf

Arch Linux uses the file /etc/rc.conf as the principal location for system configuration. This one file contains a wide range of configuration information, principally used at system startup. As its name directly implies, it also contains settings for and invokes the /etc/rc* files, and is, of course, sourced by these files.

LOCALIZATION section

LOCALE

This sets your system locale, which will be used by all i18n-aware applications and utilities. You can get a list of the available locales by running locale -a from the command line. This setting's default is usually fine for US English users. However if you experience any problems such as some characters not printing right and being replaced by squares you may want to go back and replace "en_US.utf8" with just "en_US".

DAEMON_LOCALE

Specifies whether or not to use the daemon locale (with "yes" or "no"). Will use the environment variable $LOCALE as the value of the locale if specified as "yes", otherwise will use the C locale (if left at the default value of "no").

HARDWARECLOCK

Specifies whether the hardware clock, which is synchronized on boot and on shutdown, stores UTC time, or local time. See Set Clock.

TIMEZONE

Specify your time zone. (All available zones are under /usr/share/zoneinfo/).

KEYMAP

The available keymaps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps. Please note that this setting is only valid for your TTYs, not any graphical window managers or X.

CONSOLEFONT

Available console fonts reside under /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ if you must change. The default (blank) is safe.

CONSOLEMAP

Defines the console map to load with the setfont program at boot. Possible maps are found in /usr/share/kbd/consoletrans, if needed. The default (blank) is safe.

USECOLOR

Select "yes" if you have a color monitor and wish to have colors in your consoles.

HARDWARE section

MODULES

Specify additional MODULES if you know that an important module is missing. For example, if you will be using loopback filesystems, add "loop". Note that normally all needed modules are automatically loaded by udev, so you will rarely need to add something here.

Example for HARDWARE:

# Scan hardware and load required modules at boot
MODULES=()

NETWORKING section

HOSTNAME

Set your hostname to your liking. This is the name of your computer. Whatever you put here, also put it in /etc/hosts.

Example:

HOSTNAME="arch"

interface

Specify the ethernet interface you want to be used for connecting to your local network.

address

If you want to use a static IP for your computer, specify it here. Leave this blank for DHCP.

netmask

Optional, defaults to 255.255.255.0. If you want to use a custom netmask, specify it here. Leave this blank for DHCP.

broadcast

Optional. If you want to use a custom broadcast address, specify it here. Leave this blank for DHCP.

gateway

If you set a static IP in "address", enter the IP address of the default gateway (eg. your modem/router) here. Leave this blank for DHCP.

NETWORK_PERSIST

Setting this to "yes" will skip network shutdown. This is required if your root device is on NFS.

NETWORKS

This is an optional setting to be enabled only if using the netcfg package with optional dialog package. Enable these netcfg profiles at boot-up. These are useful if you happen to need more advanced network features than the simple network service supports, such as multiple network configurations (ie, laptop users).

When using a static IP, modify /etc/resolv.conf to specify the DNS servers of choice. Please see the section below regarding this file.

Note: Connecting to a wireless network automatically requires a few more steps and may require you to set up a network manager such as netcfg or wicd. Please see the Wireless Setup page for more information

Tip: If using a non-standard MTU size (a.k.a. jumbo frames) is desired AND the installation machine hardware supports them, see the Jumbo Frames wiki article for further configuration.

DAEMONS section

This array simply lists the names of those scripts contained in /etc/rc.d/ which are to be started during the boot process, and the order in which they start. Asynchronous initialization by backgrounding is also supported and useful for speeding up boot:

DAEMONS=(network @syslog-ng netfs @crond)

If a script name is prefixed with a bang (!), it is not executed.

If a script is prefixed with an "at" symbol (@), it shall be executed in the background; the startup sequence will not wait for successful completion of each daemon before continuing to the next. (Useful for speeding up system boot). Do not background daemons that are needed by other daemons. For example "mpd" depends on "network", therefore backgrounding network may cause mpd to break.

Edit this array whenever new system services are installed, if starting them automatically during boot is desired.

Note: This "BSD-style" init, is the Arch way of handling what other distributions handle with various symlinks to an /etc/init.d/ directory.

General information

The daemons line need not be changed at this time, but it is useful to explain what daemons are, as they will be addressed later in this guide.

A daemon is a program that runs in the background, waiting for events to occur and offering services. A good example is a web server that waits for a request to deliver a page (e.g.: httpd) or an SSH server waiting for a user login (e.g.: sshd). While these are full-featured applications, there are also daemons whose work is not that visible. Examples are a daemon which writes messages into a log file (e.g. syslog, metalog), and a daemon which provides a graphical login (e.g.: gdm, kdm). All these programs can be added to the daemons line and will be started when the system boots. Useful daemons will be presented during this guide.

Tip: All Arch daemon scripts reside under /etc/rc.d/

/etc/fstab

The fstab (for file systems table) is part of the system configuration listing all available disks and disk partitions, and indicating how they are to be initialized or otherwise integrated into the overall system's filesystem. The /etc/fstab file is most commonly used by the mount command. The mount command takes a filesystem on a device, and adds it to the main system hierarchy that you see when you use your system. mount -a is called from /etc/rc.sysinit, about 3/4 of the way through the boot process, and reads /etc/fstab to determine which options should be used when mounting the specified devices therein. If noauto is appended to a filesystem in /etc/fstab, mount -a will not mount it at boot.

Note: See the fstab article for more information and performance tweaks such as "noatime" or "relatime".

<file system>

Describes the block device or remote filesystem to be mounted. For regular mounts, this field will contain a link to a block device node (as created by mknod which is called by udev at boot) for the device to be mounted; for instance, /dev/cdrom or /dev/sda1.

Note: If your system has more than one hard drive, the installer will default to using UUID rather than the sdx naming scheme, for consistent device mapping. Utilizing UUID has several advantages and may also be preferred to avoid issues if hard disks are added to the system in the future. Due to active developments in the kernel and also udev, the ordering in which drivers for storage controllers are loaded may change randomly, yielding an unbootable system/kernel panic. Nearly every motherboard has several controllers (onboard SATA, onboard IDE), and due to the aforementioned development updates, /dev/sda may become /dev/sdb on the next reboot. For more information, see Persistent block device naming.

<dir>

Describes the mount point for the filesystem. For swap partitions, this field should be specified as 'none'; (Swap partitions are not actually mounted.)

<type>

Describes the type of the filesystem. The Linux kernel supports many filesystem types. (For the filesystems currently supported by the running kernel, see /proc/filesystems). An entry 'swap' denotes a file or partition to be used for swapping. An entry 'ignore' causes the line to be ignored. This is useful to show disk partitions which are currently unused.

<options>

Describes the mount options associated with the filesystem. It is formatted as a comma-separated list of options with no intervening spaces. It contains at least the type of mount plus any additional options appropriate to the filesystem type. For documentation on the available options for non-nfs file systems, see mount(8).

<dump>

Used by the dump(8) command to determine which filesystems are to be dumped. dump is a backup utility. If the fifth field is not present, a value of zero is returned and dump will assume that the filesystem does not need to be backed up. Note that dump is not installed by default.

<pass>

Used by the fsck(8) program to determine the order in which filesystem checks are done at boot time. The root filesystem should have the highest priority with <pass> of 1, and other filesystems you want to have checked should have a <pass> of 2. Filesystems with 0 <pass> will not be checked. Filesystems within a drive will be checked sequentially, but filesystems on different drives will be checked at the same time to utilize parallelism available in the hardware. If the sixth field is not present or zero, a value of zero is returned and fsck will assume that the filesystem does not need to be checked.

Note: Most users will not need to modify this file at this time, but please read the following explanatory information.

This file allows further fine-tuning of the initial ram filesystem, or initramfs, (also historically referred to as the initial ramdisk or "initrd") for your system. The initramfs is a gzipped image that is read by the kernel during boot. The purpose of the initramfs is to bootstrap the system to the point where it can access the root filesystem. This means it has to load any modules that are required for devices like IDE, SCSI, or SATA drives (or USB/FW, if you are booting from a USB/FW drive). Once the initrramfs loads the proper modules, either manually or through udev, it passes control to the kernel and your boot continues. For this reason, the initramfs only needs to contain the modules necessary to access the root filesystem. It does not need to contain every module you would ever want to use. The majority of common kernel modules will be loaded later on by udev, during the init process.

mkinitcpio is the next generation of initramfs creation. It has many advantages over the old mkinitrd and mkinitramfs scripts.

It uses glibc and busybox to provide a small and lightweight base for early userspace.

It can use udev for hardware autodetection at runtime, thus preventing numerous unnecessary modules from being loaded.

Its hook-based init script is easily extendable with custom hooks, which can easily be included in pacman packages without having to modifiy mkinitcpio itself.

It already supports lvm2, dm-crypt for both legacy and luks volumes, raid, swsusp and TuxOnIce resuming and booting from usb mass storage devices.

Many features can be configured from the kernel command line without having to rebuild the image.

The mkinitcpio script makes it possible to include the image in a kernel, thus making a self-contained kernel image is possible.

Its flexibility makes recompiling a kernel unnecessary in many cases.

If using RAID or LVM on the root filesystem, the appropriate HOOKS must be configured. See the wiki pages for LVM/RAID and Configuring mkinitcpio for more information. If using a non-US keyboard. add the keymap hook to load your local keymap during boot. Add the usbinput hook if using a USB keyboard (otherwise, if boot fails for some reason you will be asked to enter root's password for system maintenance but will be unable to do so). Remember to add the usb hook when installing arch on an external hard drive, Comfact Flash, or SD card, which is connected via usb, e.g.:

/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf

This file can be used to set special configuration options for the kernel modules. It is unnecessary to configure this file in the example. The article on kernel modules has more information.

/etc/resolv.conf

Note: If you are using DHCP, you may safely ignore this file, as by default, it will be dynamically created and destroyed by the dhcpcd daemon. You may change this default behavior if you wish. See the network and resolv.conf pages for more information.

The resolver is a set of routines in the C library that provide access to the Internet Domain Name System (DNS). One of the main functions of DNS is to translate domain names into IP addresses, to make the Web a friendlier place. The resolver configuration file, or /etc/resolv.conf, contains information that is read by the resolver routines the first time they are invoked by a process.

If you use a static IP, set your DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf (nameserver <ip-address>). You may have as many as you wish.

An example, using OpenDNS:

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

If you are using a router, you may specify your DNS servers in the router itself, and merely point to it from your /etc/resolv.conf, using your router's IP (which is also your gateway from /etc/rc.conf). Example:

nameserver 192.168.1.1

If using DHCP, you may also specify your DNS servers in the router, or allow automatic assignment from your ISP, if your ISP is so equipped.

/etc/hosts

This file associates IP addresses with hostnames and aliases, one line per IP address. For each host a single line should be present with the following information:

<IP-address> <hostname> [aliases...]

Add your hostname, coinciding with the one specified in /etc/rc.conf, as an alias, so that it looks like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost yourhostname

Warning: This format, including the "localhost" and your actual host name, is required for program compatibility! So, if you have named your computer "arch", then that line above should look like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost arch

Errors in this entry may cause poor network performance and/or certain programs to open very slowly, or not work at all. This is a very common error for beginners.

Note: Recent versions of the Arch Linux Installer automatically add your hostname to this file once you edit /etc/rc.conf with such information. If, for whatever reason, this is not the case, you may add it yourself with the given instructions.

If you use a static IP, add another line using the syntax: <static-IP> <hostname.domainname.org> <hostname> e.g.:

192.168.1.100 yourhostname.domain.org yourhostname

Tip: For convenience, you may also use /etc/hosts aliases for hosts on your network, and/or on the Web, e.g.:

192.168.1.90 media
192.168.1.88 data

The above example would allow you access a media and data server on your network by name and without the need for typing out their respective IP addresses.

/etc/locale.gen

The /usr/sbin/locale-gen command reads from /etc/locale.gen to generate specific locales. They can then be used by glibc and any other locale-aware program or library for rendering text, correctly displaying regional monetary values, time and date formats, alphabetic idiosyncrasies, and other locale-specific standards.

By default /etc/locale.gen is an empty file with commented documentation. Once edited, the file remains untouched. locale-gen runs on every glibc upgrade, generating all the locales specified in /etc/locale.gen.

Choose the locale(s) you need by removing the # in front of the lines you want, e.g.:

en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8

The installer will now run the locale-gen script, which will generate the locales you specified. You may change your locale in the future by editing /etc/locale.gen and subsequently running locale-gen as root.

Note: If you fail to choose your locale, this will lead to a "The current locale is invalid..." error. This is perhaps the most common mistake by new Arch users.

Pacman Mirror

Choose a mirror repository for pacman. Remember that archlinux.org is throttled, limiting downloads to 50KB/s. Check Mirrors for more details about selecting a pacman mirror. Note that the mirror chosen here will carry over into your installation.

Root password

Finally, set a root password and make sure that you remember it later. Return to the Main Menu and continue with Installing Bootloader.

Done

When you select "Done", the system will rebuild the images and put you back to the Main Menu. This may take some time.

Install Bootloader

Because we have no secondary operating system in our example, we will need a bootloader. GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) will be used in the following examples. Alternatively, you may choose LILO, Syslinux or GRUB2. Please see the related wiki and documentation pages if you choose to use a bootloader other than GRUB.

The provided GRUB configuration (/boot/grub/menu.lst) should be sufficient, but verify its contents to ensure accuracy (specifically, ensure that the root (/) partition is specified by UUID on line 3). You may want to alter the resolution of the console by adding a vga=<number> kernel argument corresponding to your desired virtual console resolution. (A table of resolutions and the corresponding numbers is printed in the menu.lst.)

Explanation:

title

A printed menu selection. "Arch Linux (Main)" will be printed on the screen as a menu selection.

root

GRUB's root; the drive and partition where the kernel (/boot) resides, according to system BIOS. (More accurately, where GRUB's stage2 file resides). NOT necessarily the root (/) file system, as they can reside on separate partitions. GRUB's numbering scheme starts at 0, and uses an hdx,x format regardless of IDE or SATA, and enclosed within parentheses. The example indicates that /boot is on the first partition of the first drive, according to the BIOS, so (hd0,0).

kernel

This line specifies:

The path and filename of the kernel relative to GRUB's root. In the example, /boot is merely a directory residing on the same partition as / and vmlinuz-linux is the kernel filename; /boot/vmlinuz-linux. If /boot were on a separate partition, the path and filename would be simply /vmlinuz-linux, being relative to GRUB's root.

The root= argument to the kernel statement specifies the partition containing the root (/) directory in the booted system, (more accurately, the partition containing /sbin/init). An easy way to distinguish the 2 appearances of "root" in /boot/grub/menu.lst is to remember that the first root statement informs GRUB where the kernel resides, whereas the second root= kernel argument tells the kernel where the root filesystem (/) resides.

Kernel options: In our example, ro mounts the filesystem as read-only during startup, which is usually a safe default; you may wish to change this in case it causes problems booting. quiet sets the default kernel log level so that all messages during boot are suppressed except serious ones. Depending on hardware, rootdelay=8 may need to be added to the kernel options in order to be able to boot from an external usb hard drive.

initrd

The path and filename of the initial RAM filesystem relative to GRUB's root. Again, in the example, /boot is merely a directory residing on the same partition as / and initramfs-linux.img is the initrd filename; /boot/initramfs-linux.img. If /boot were on a separate partition, the path and filename would be simply /initramfs-linux.img, being relative to GRUB's root.